3.2 Protadin Change Compilation

So far I've only seen threads with individual changes and not a discussion on the overall changes to protection paladins. Let's take a look at the proposed changes

1. Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.

2. On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier 8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier 5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier 5 warrior Shield Block bonus

3. Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech). Equally, Judgement of Light is now based on players health and not AP / Spellpower

4. Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings. ( some confusion on exactly what this will be, but most seem to agree that it is meant for when there is only 1 prot paladin in the raid so you get your buff and 10 stam)

5. Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players

6. Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.

7. Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor. (this is more of a holy thing, but I have seen people spec this deep into holy for the buff)

8. Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration or mana cost, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization. (thank you for this convenience)

9. Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal over time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds (an indirect buff, because most protadins will be casting their sacred shield on themselves 60 seconds up-time is nice)

10. Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage. (This is a huge damage / threat buff with the glyph since its Holy Damage = Righteous Fury threat)

11. Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130% - Sorta expected since the buff to block value happened, I see this as a wash

AND THE BIG DADDY BUFF

12. Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum. (a 2 minute built in guardian spirit)

These are huge improvements to Protection Paladins, I really hope they stay as planed. Each one can have an impact on some of the discussion threads that are already going on, but I wanted to have a thread that spells them all out and we can talk about as a group.

The vindication change is also fairly protection related.

4. Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings. ( what that means is, lets say your stam is 100 - kings give you 10 stam and plessing of sanctuary gives you 10 - NOT that kings gives you 10 stam and now sanctuary gives you 11 stam) Still VERY VERY nice

My understanding of this is that if you have 100 stamina, and cast either on you, you will have 110 stamina. If you have both on you, you will have 110 stamina.

badgermonkey wrote:My understanding of this is that if you have 100 stamina, and cast either on you, you will have 110 stamina. If you have both on you, you will have 110 stamina.

Only difference is kings will also give you 10% of all other stats, including agi, str, int and spirit \o/

[My understanding of this is that if you have 100 stamina, and cast either on you, you will have 110 stamina. If you have both on you, you will have 110 stamina.

That makes absolutely no sense then - why even have the change. I really believe what they meant to say is that you don't get the effect of kings first then this one...

I'm trying to think of a situation when you would actually want Sanctuary over kings - I can't think of one, so this makes no sense to have them mutually exclusive. The tooltip would have said Mutually exclusive (as they have done in the past) so this leads me to believe that this is a stam buff but not additive with the effect of kings.

It makes a lot of sense. Consider the situations where you are the only paladin in the raid (uncommon in 25-man but happens in 10-man all the time). You are prone to blessing Kings on everyone, yourself included. The largest reason a tank has for wanting kings is the increase in health pool. The problem with having Kings but not Sanctuary is that your mana levels will be relatively tenuous and your damage reduction will be lessened; the mana issues sans Sanctuary are especially evident with 1/2 Spiritual Attunement builds.

Now, when you are the only paladin, you can still get the +10% stamina you used to get from Kings, along with the mana recovery and damage reduction of Sanctuary, all from Sanctuary. Obviously, when you have your choice of two blessings, you'll want both, but when your choices are limited, you won't have to pick health pool or mitigation/mana.

But still you could argue the reverse - why would the tooltip not say mutually exclusive - I can see both sides ... but on those RARE, and I do mean RARE (like LOL, you have 1 paladin in a raid and it happens to be a prot paladin or maybe they mean for 5 mans) but that is a lot of trouble for changing blessing of sanctuary where in my experience raids could care less about sanctuary for the most part... Again, I can see for 5 mans where this would be useful, but still... I am hopeful of the other

I honestly can see your side, that it is this really minor minor buff for those rare 1 pally prot times - but why not say with perfect clarity that the stam buff is mutually exclusive to kings... so I think clarification is needed.

Blue:

A second change to Protection is we want to make sure Blessing of Sanctuary is always the tanking blessing of choice. A likely change here is to have it boost stamina as well.
(Source: MMO-champ)


I really doubt their intentions are to give us another 10% stam, its for those non-kings moments. Its not supposed to be a major buff, thats what AD changes and Block changes are for.

Oldpappa wrote:I'm trying to think of a situation when you would actually want Sanctuary over kings - I can't think of one, so this makes no sense to have them mutually exclusive. The tooltip would have said Mutually exclusive (as they have done in the past) so this leads me to believe that this is a stam buff but not additive with the effect of kings.

If you're the only Paladin in a raid or instance group then this will allow you to run with the mana regen and damage reduction parts of BoSanc (fairly sure that for most a 3% flat reuduction works out about the same as +10% to agi, though I haven't done the maths) without losing all that HP. I think this is Blizzard saying don't worry, you don't need to stack multiple Paladins in a 5 or 10-man group and nothing more.

On that note, there is, to my mind at least, absolutely no way Blizzard will allow the +stam from BoSanc and Kings to stack in any way. Otherwise you're entering the realm of making a Prot Pally essential to every single raid and we know they're trying to get away from that kind of thing in favour of bringing the player not the class.

So, they scaled back SoR by 30% but that leaves 70% buff to damage/threat still with everything being DOUBLED right?
On top of this, we have to re-consider most of our BiS gear. For example 4set (with shoulders) isn't out of the question any more. And it seems we are back to LoO for our ranged slot.

edit:

skip this, making a new topic for that one.

I am commonly the only paladin in the raid as our guild only does 10 man raids and there is only one other paladin that raids with us. I am always having to choose between having sanc or kings and most often I choose sanc unless I know for a fact that I am going to have enough incomming damage to overcome the lost mana. I love this change, I will still lose a little bit of avoidance and threat from not having kings but the health/DR/mana return is a higher priority to me.

I'm convinced, I wish it was super ubber, but sadly, I know it is the other... I changed the OP

For the love of god, why dont they just give us the mana in righteous fury and dump that stupid sancblessing, or make it a selfbuff or put it in our kings.

I really fail to see the point to have 2 blessings that prot wants still, the agi and str provided by kings is still very nice, so I still want both...

Anorian wrote:For the love of god, why dont they just give us the mana in righteous fury and dump that stupid sancblessing, or make it a selfbuff or put it in our kings.

I really fail to see the point to have 2 blessings that prot wants still, the agi and str provided by kings is still very nice, so I still want both...

I agree with this sentiment. When they removed the rage/runic power components of Sanctuary, it once more began to seem like a tacked-on addition aimed more at the class able to cast it than any of the other raid members. Admittedly, 3% raid-wide damage reduction is cool when you can spare a paladin solely on Sanctuary, but that should be obtainable elsewhere.

I think a better solution, to cover both the raid-wide benefits and personal benefits, would be to put the mana regeneration component into improved righteous fury (perhaps 1% per level, it'd top out at 1% more than existing Sanctuary, but the difference is minor and could even help during fights like Vezax and future "no manas for you!" encounters) and put the damage reduction component into improved devotion aura (1% per level).